HERITAGE ISLES - As a Ford Explorer approaches the gatehouse, guard John Wynn gets up from his chair to have a look.

Wynn stands in the doorway, clipboard in hand. The Explorer slows but doesn't stop. Wynn waves as the SUV passes on through.

Every day, Wynn and the other guards pretend to control who enters the gates at Heritage Isles, a subdivision of 1,600 homes. Yet a typical nightclub bouncer clasping a velvet rope has more authority than Wynn, who can only stare as cars drive past.

"It's got to change," Wynn said. "We can't do a thing. Why do you need a guard if you can't stop people?"

That's the same question homeowners, who pay $100,000 a year for the guards, are asking the subdivision developer, Lennar Homes.

Promised an exclusive gated community when they moved in, residents say that's not what they have now. The guards are powerless. Some gates are never closed. Anyone can get in.

"We're paying a lot of money to have somebody wave," said Ralph Anderson, who moved to Sandy Pointe Drive three years ago. "It's wasteful."

The flap over security at Heritage Isles is a growing concern for Lennar Homes, which bought the subdivision from U.S. Homes. During a contentious Community Development District meeting three weeks ago that was meant to discuss the project's uncertain financial future, residents instead obsessed about the gates and guards.

"They knew full well that the development would not be gated," said one homeowner, John Clark. "Their brochures misled us."

If Lennar tries to keep the promise made to homeowners, it will violate city and state laws that prohibit the blocking of any public street.

When Heritage Isles was annexed into Tampa in 1998, the streets already had been paid for by tax-free municipal bonds. Therefore, the streets are considered public.

But developers had already built the gates. So city officials said the gates could stay, as long as they didn't prevent people from using the streets inside.

During the development's first few months, however, guards regularly stopped cars at the Grand Isle Drive gate to ask for drivers' names. Signs at a second entrance, a gate at Sandy Pointe Drive, stated that only residents were allowed to enter.

"It made residents feel safe," said Wynn, the guard.

It was also against the law.

It's illegal to obstruct a public street by "impeding, hindering, stifling, retarding, or restraining traffic," according to Florida law.

Lennar officials didn't return numerous phone calls for this story. But Lennar and city officials have been debating this issue in a series of letters and e-mails since last summer.

Unannounced visits by city staffers found it was common for Heritage Isles guards to refuse to open the gate until drivers stopped their cars to answer questions, said Christine Bruno, a city transportation engineer.

Lennar attorney Donna Feldman argued that the gates were legal because nobody had been turned away by the guards.

"The intention is not to prohibit access to any public right-of-way or the subdivision as a whole," Feldman wrote, "but to direct traffic to the main entrance in the interest of protecting the health, safety and welfare of the residents within the Heritage Isles development."

Bruno countered that sending traffic away from one public street to one where a guard is posted is a violation of Florida law.

Assistant city attorney Gina Grimes offered a compromise in August. She said Lennar could continue to operate its gates, but it would have to remove that sign that said "residents only." In its place, Grimes said Lennar should post a sign explaining that all the streets inside the gate were public. The sign also should state that drivers didn't have to answer the guards' questions. She also asked that Lennar install a trigger that would open the gates automatically.

After talking with Lennar officials, Feldman had an answer to that: No way.

That solution, Feldman wrote, "defeats the fundamental reason for having the gates and guardhouses."

A showdown was averted in November when the City Council approved Lennar's request to build 433 more homes on the condition that it post guards at the gates, have them open automatically when a vehicle approaches, or leave them open at all times.

Still, little had been resolved.

Feldman said then that this was a temporary solution until her clients transferred ownership of the roads from the city to the private homeowners association. Once all the roads are private, Heritage Isles can do anything it wants with the gates.

But that could take years, said a city attorney, Morris Massey.

"If they want to privatize all streets in Heritage Isles, we would need ALL of the OWNERS to agree to this," Massey wrote in a November e-mail. "It took a small subdivision like Westover almost 7 years to get 100 percent approval. This would be much more difficult in a larger development the size of Heritage Isles."

As of last week the gate at Sandy Pointe Drive still didn't have a guard. While Lennar has removed the sign that Bruno objected to, another sign near this gate says the entrance to the development is 1,500 feet away at the Grand Isle gate. A sign above the gate's call box instructs the motorist: To visit model center, hit call button.

Actually, the gates open automatically, though a vehicle has to practically touch the nose of its bumper to the gate to get it to open.

This might serve two purposes. Few motorists would drive that close to a gate without knowing it opens automatically; most would turn away. And for residents concerned about security, the iron gate appears to be secure.

Take Chris Dutton, who moved to his Sandy Pointe Drive home about 18 months ago. During that period, he has dutifully used his remote to open the gate every day, not knowing the gate opened automatically.

"The gate opens?' Dutton said. "I didn't know that. I'm a little surprised. I thought I needed my remote to open it."

As for the Grand Isle gate, Wynn and the other guards can only wave at motorists. One gate is upright for visitors. A second gate, for residents, is down. That's to make residents feel better, Wynn said, but they still complain.

"People here get mad," Wynn said. "They ask me why I don't ask people questions. I just send them to the clubhouse. I don't want to get into it."

Grimes, the assistant city attorney, wants Heritage Isles to agree to permanent gate requirements or to transfer the roads within the community to the homeowners association.

On May 28, Grimes mailed Feldman a list of requirements Heritage Isles would have to follow if Lennar wants to privatize the streets. One requirement is approval from every homeowner with a house on the roads.

Grimes also will mail new restrictions for operating the gates. The city plans to require that the Grand Isle gate remain upright and that motorists be allowed in even if they don't want to speak to a guard. The Sandy Pointe gate would open automatically when a vehicle is 40 feet away.

But some homeowners, like Mike Champagne, wonder why Heritage Isles should bother at all.

"It's a joke," Champagne said. "What's the point of having these gates if they don't keep anybody out?"

Champagne said it was doubtful 100 percent of the owners would agree to privatize the roads, and said Lennar should start using the $100,000 it pays every year for the guards on something else.

But he said getting answers out of Lennar or their representatives was difficult. "They've been keeping us in the dark," Champagne said. "They don't tell us anything."